AEW has a history of licensing well-known songs for wrestler entrances including Living Colour’s “Cult of Personality” (CM Punk), the Pixies’ “Where Is My Mind” and Jefferson Starship’s “Jane” (Orange Cassidy) as well as Baltimora’s “Tarzan Boy” (Jungle Boy).
The company also licensed Europe’s “The Final Countdown” for Bryan Danielson’s appearance at Forbidden Door, and late last year upon their return to AEW, Kenny Omega and The Young Bucks took to using the legendary Kansas song “Carry On Wayward Son” to make their entrances.
Most recently, Rob Van Dam debuted in AEW to the familiar tune of Pantera’s “Walk.”
Recently, Khan told the Battleground Podcast about how he has been able to secure the rights to some songs, specifically when the artist is willing to negotiate a “reasonable deal.”
“That’s why I wanted to pay the extra and go the extra mile to get ‘Walk’ by Pantera,” he said. “Pantera was great and worked with us and we worked out a reasonable deal. I compare music licenses and wrestling to trades in pro sports. It’s like, you can do your best, but every trade is its own transaction, it has to be between, at least two willing parties. Sometimes people ask for money that I don’t think is reasonable, other times we have gotten deals that I thought were very fair.”
Khan continued: “Every great moment where we’ve licensed music, we still have that music, I paid for the rights in perpetuity. I’ve had a lot of other opportunities to license music and work with a lot of great artists. We’ve done all kinds of great stuff, and hopefully, someday all of that will be available for people to watch in perpetuity on the library forever.”
Previously, Danielson revealed just how much Europe wanted for the use of “The Final Countdown.”
“I hate talking business stuff when I don’t exactly know what it was, but it wasn’t just the amount of money,” Danielson said. “They would only let (AEW) play it like 20 times a year or something like that. For several $100,000 you can play ‘Final Countdown’ 20 times a year. That doesn’t work for us.”
